


Where the Love Light Gleams

by heyfrenchfreudiana



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst Lite, Christmas, F/M, Natasha reads all the amazon bestsellers, Romanogers Secret Santa fic exchange, loosely follows mcu timeline, romanogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 15:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5544617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyfrenchfreudiana/pseuds/heyfrenchfreudiana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In some shape or form, Natasha Romanoff had spent the last four years celebrating a holiday she categorically thought of as gross capitalistic propaganda (in short) with Captain America. </p><p>(AO3 posting of my contribution to the Romanogers Secret Santa exchange on Tumblr).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Love Light Gleams

**Author's Note:**

> See other really wonderful Romanogers holiday-themed work [here](http://ssromanogers.tumblr.com/). I wanted to post on Ao3 so that I could see any comments and so that anyone who has issues (as I do) with viewing fics on tumblr can see it here :) I hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas and that 2016 is everything it's supposed to be. 
> 
> Title pulled from ["I'll Be Home for Christmas"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4aA_K2MF5E)
> 
> #fic literally phoned in #typed on cellphone #author has a newborn okay

In some shape or form, Natasha Romanoff had spent the last four years celebrating a holiday she categorically thought of as gross capitalistic propaganda (in short) with Captain America.

Her ideal way to spend the twenty-fifth of December was with a bottle of Merlot and a good book. Something that might fall in the continuum of “chick lit” or “books someone's great aunt buys at the airport bookstore,” because she fully intended on drinking the whole bottle and didn’t really want to have to think too hard while doing it. She’d also, on occasion, been convinced to spend it with Clint (he was partial to pizza and “The Christmas Story” to infinity on TBS, something she’d only been successfully conned into the one time…). And though she tried to avoid it, there had been a small handful of holidays spent working, (gathering intel at The Summit Club in Johannesburg while the Western world opened presents and drank to avoid dealing with family, really wasn’t the worst thing).

On the whole, Natasha hated Christmas.

The first Christmas that Natasha spent with Steve, she’d felt only a little like a glorified babysitter. Just back from a mission that had felt way too long in Nebraska of all places, she’d truly looked forward to her night off when Coulson had sent her the file for her next assignment.

“It’s not really even work, Agent. Consider it ‘checking up on a SHIELD project’,” he’d said over the phone, very much sounding like he was trying to sell her something. “We’d just like to keep an eye on him.”

She didn’t ask questions about who he was or why he needed a chaperone on Christmas Eve because Natasha didn’t get paid to ask questions. And Natasha didn’t admit her disappointment but damned if she didn’t huff when she pulled up the file on her laptop. Steve Rogers, lives at fourteen-oh-four Alameda and white as white can be. A quick glance at the file and she’d huffed again. A brand-new copy of “The Help” sat on her kitchen counter that she’d planned on spending the night with but duty called.

Instead of catching up on her book-club-of-one reading, Natasha spent her first Christmas Eve with Steve Rogers on stake-out, eyes in binoculars and ears for anything that might mean anything.

It helped that Steve Rogers wasn’t a chore to watch. Not that she particularly cared for watching the blond in the vacant apartment across the way push his way quietly around a chicken pot-pie as though the food had delivered him news that his mother had died. Pulling her coat tight, Natasha sat in a darkened room and watched SHIELD’S “project” pace quietly around his sparsely decorated apartment with a long face. No Christmas decorations or anything to suggest that Steve Rogers was particularly keen on celebrating the holiday either. If she’d had to hazard a guess and based on flat affect and his own apparent affinity for the dark, Natasha would have diagnosed the Project with depression. It crossed her mind that perhaps Coulson had asked for someone to watch over him for that reason. Whoever he was, he was important enough to be on holiday suicide watch.

Alone for Christmas, just like her. Natasha considered any number of ways to knock on his apartment door just as a way to say that he wasn’t alone, (neighbor needing sugar ruse?), but decided against in favor of letting him finish whatever he was watching on TV uninterrupted.

“Merry Christmas, Steve Rogers,” she whispered under her breath the next morning when he pulled on a brown leather jacket and opened his front door. She meant it genuinely.

***

A year later, Natasha and Steve sat in a Chinese restaurant with the rest of the team and she found herself hoping he felt more alive than he had the year before. Only Coulson would have known that she’d spent the previous Christmas spying on Captain America, and it wasn’t like anyone could say they were surprised she was there, (she wasn’t known for her flower arranging skills after all). She watched him in between spoonfuls of eggdrop soup and thought about the year that they’d had. A rough one, at least at the start, though it had been months since their last run-in with aliens.

“Hey Cap, how is this Christmas different from you know, in the forties?” Clint asked before yelping because Natasha had stepped on his foot underneath the table. Sometimes Clint had no couth.

“Well, besides the people?” Steve asked ruefully, corners of his mouth turned up just slightly in a way that Natasha appreciated. It wasn’t like any of them really had family they’d rather be with. Christmas dinner with coworkers under the pretense that they all really wanted Chinese, and no one would outwardly say how pathetic it probably looked. Less pathetic, she decided, than the Science Brothers retreating to their microscopes and computer labs or than Clint on the couch in his underwear watching Animal Planet. No less pathetic than her sitting at home with the copy of “Fifty Shades of Grey” that she’d only reluctantly bought because it was on the year’s bestseller’s list.

At least Steve was honest about the loneliness.

“Merry Christmas, Agent Romanoff,” he told her when everyone was leaving the restaurant to go their separate ways. He looked sad, but not any more despondent than on any other day, but for whatever reason, it tugged at her heart.

“When was the last time you went ice skating, Captain?” she asked with only mildly flirtatious intentions, before she could stop herself. It was absurd. Christmas wasn’t even her holiday. She’d grown up with only a vague curiosity about why Western children believed a fat man in a red suit honestly had enough time and manpower to deliver presents to everyone all over the world.

 _(It just wasn_ _’_ _t_ logical _, no matter how fast his little rocket-sled was and it wasn_ _’_ _t like the Red Room was going to let her believe in magic, especially if Russia_ _’_ _s Grandfather Frost was so obviously just someone_ _’_ _s drunk uncle in a sweaty blue suit)._

He tipped his head to the side as if surprised by the invitation and Natasha hoped he wouldn't mistake it for anything more than two colleagues hanging out. Not that Natasha was big on "hanging out". She was just glad to make his holiday a bit less depressing then the year before. Bonus, she thought as they walked, that it made hers also a bit less so.

As it turned out, entrance to the rink at Rockefeller Center was first come first serve. Just as well, because standing at the rail drinking coffee wasn't a bad way to kill time either. His cheeks turned pink in the cold but he insisted on giving her his coat when she shivered, even with her eye rolls and protests. It was chivalrous and old-fashioned, and she felt instinctively ashamed. She also thought his coat smelled like leather and made her feel deliciously covered.

When she said "Merry Christmas" for the second year in a row, he smiled and told her to keep the coat.

***

Natasha was supposed to spend the third Christmas on a beach in Thailand. A holiday in her bikini, curled up on a towel with the latest book, (she was stubbornly bent on finishing the last hundred pages of "The Fault in Our Stars", even if she hated it for being emotionally manipulative). Papaya and cool drinks and definitely not working.

She glanced over at Steve and tried not to laugh at the situation, though he made it hard because of what he was wearing.

Shorts. Steve wore shorts.

They were plain cargo shorts, nothing too tacky, but suddenly wholly impractical given where they were and what they were likely about to do.

It was supposed to be a simple assignment. Pulling data from a warehouse in Bangkok, something that they’d been told would be quick and almost painless.

_("Take a Christmas holiday overseas, enjoy yourselves for a change.")_

_Whatever that meant._

Natasha did her best to hide her bitterness that Steve had been asked to come along at all. After New York, Steve had worked alongside her already once or twice in his capacity as a "consultant." And there were times when his muscle was immediately appreciated, both when the force was needed (those armed guards in Mexico City) and when it was all over (appreciation given to whoever had designed his newest suit because hate to see you go, love to watch you walk away and all that).

But this one. This assignment. If it was as quick and painless as Maria had suggested, he was unnecessary. Which meant that either Maria had left out critical information when she'd sent over their assignment or that Maria was playing matchmaker, with special interest in Natasha and Steve spending Christmas on a beach in Bangkok together.

Natasha watched him tense up, undoubtedly deciding what his next move should be. For one hundred and one reasons, Steve was not really her type, not that she had a type. _Too good. Too blonde. Too pretty._ Except for his jaw, just then and anytime he was angry. She thought about kissing it, lips pressed right against all the lines and angles and whether or not he'd mind. Not her type, but another version of her might have considered it anyway.

She'd have words with Maria when they got back.

However things were supposed to be, at present, Natasha didn’t think anyone would have expected to find the Black Widow and Captain America stuck in a supply closet. Who would have known that the warehouse that should have taken fifteen minutes to clear would also be the site for a Christmas Party?

"Maybe we can just go in and blend in..." he suggested half-heartedly, hand clutching shield in contradiction. She shrugged because it made sense that knocking heads wasn't on his list of things to do for Christmas either. The opposite of holiday cheer. These guys were armed.

"Maybe we can wait them out," she peered through a small window in the door.

"Is this how you spend all your Christmases?" he huffed out a low laugh and leaned against the wall next to a shelf stocked with paper towels and bottles of bleach.

"It's not a favorite holiday of mine," she looked down, grateful that the closet was too dark for him to see her face.

"I guess it's not a big soviet holiday," Steve acknowledged. "I'm not a big fan either."

She knew he wasn't, at least based on her experiences with him in recent years, but she gave him a sympathetic smile anyway. "That goes against popular mythology, Captain. I thought you of all people would be passing around candy canes like crack."

"I haven't had one in over seventy years," he confessed. "The last time I celebrated, I was in Germany and it was a helluva lot colder."

She watched him clam up, his gaze likely hitting the same spot she'd been looking at, and she waited for him to tell her old stories about singing Christmas Carols with the commandos or stacking cans of spam at the bottom of a tattered and tiny spruce. He stayed silent and she guessed he didn't enjoy talking about "the good old days" as much as all of the old man jokes told behind his back would lead someone to believe.

"My first mission was on Christmas," she said slowly. It hit her as curious that she'd be admitting so much, but the four walls of the closet felt like a confessional. It was as though anything said just then would be held there forever.

_Maybe even memories of handlers testing little girls to see if they could still follow through, could still pull triggers amidst all the holiday festivity and cheer and tinsel and snow, (she could pull the trigger of course. She did). Maybe even those ghosts could stay in a supply closet in Bangkok with Steve Rogers, not that he could give her absolution and not that she really wanted it anyway._

She had an idea that maybe their ghosts could stay there together, keep each other company. Childish and romantic and possibly insulting of her to assume that he was as haunted as her.

"So, have you had the chance to hear the carol about Hawaiian Christmas days?" she said, changing the subject and hopefully the mood.

"I guess I have neglected post-War Christmas Carols..." Steve shrugged.

"It's not Thai," she grinned as she pulled the twin sidearms from the holster underneath her blouse. “But it feels like a sentimental thing to say…”

He nodded, following her cues and leaning into the door, ready to barrel through and take the brunt of anything that came from interrupting a very merry terrorist holiday bash.

“It never stops feeling weird. Fighting on Christmas,” he muttered, interrupting her train of thought.

“It’ll be fun,” Natasha smiled, silently agreeing with him. “I know a good pad thai place a few blocks over. I’ll take you as soon as we clear out. What says Christmas more than _takkatan todd_?”

“I can think of a few things,” he answered as he turned the doorknob.

“ _Mele Kalikimaka_ , Steve,” she said as she took aim. He would never admit it, not out loud or at least not to her, but this was his favorite Christmas.

***

She didn't expect to spend that next Christmas with Steve. It was her first holiday off, after all, perhaps ever because she'd made it all the way to midnight without being called in.

Everything is in its place, she noted with a sigh as she pulled her duvet around her and flipped to the yule log channel on her TV. And it was. Casillero del Diablo on the coffee table next to her and "Gone Girl" on her lap. The Christmas she had been planning for over four years and she was determined to enjoy it. A year of fighting pirates and drug lords and Hydra of all things, would have been enough for her year but then the universe had to add the media and the public eye. Fox News assessing her patriotic loyalties, (oh the irony), and the ladies on The View critiquing her wardrobe decisions and whether or not young women and girls could admire someone who was historically in the same league as the Mata Hari.

She deserved the break.

_It felt..._

_Incomplete._

She couldn't put her finger on why until she was about halfway through the bottle.

Natasha Romanoff hated Christmas. It wasn't an occasion to fill her heart with glad tidings or goodwill towards men. Christmas was, at best, a greeting card holiday that secured the masses in place via unnecessary consumerism and debt. Just another day in which people were born and people died.

And yet, she'd spent the last three with Steve. An accidental tradition.

Natasha thought about what it meant to her to miss him then. She wasn't a traditional person and she definitely wasn't used to feeling someone’s absence so acutely. She was going soft, she realized, and tried to shrug it off.

_When I think of my wife, I always think of her head._

Natasha read Nick Dunne's description of his wife's head about fifty times before she threw the book across her living room in frustration.

It was the first time she’d spent a Christmas without Steve and there wasn't anything she could do about it. They weren’t talking. Steve was who knew where, busy chasing ghosts and currently incommunicado, at least until the next global disaster. He was doing what he needed to do and she understood.

It was just as well, she reasoned. They weren't partners anymore, not quite, not with SHIELD down. Not quite friends, not since that kiss at the mall-

_She'd kissed him then. A quick diversion and he knew it. A cute tactic to keep them safe._

_Oh, but he'd kissed her later on at Sam Wilson's. Pulled her into the bathroom, hands gripping her waist so that he could put his lips to hers like he was starving. This is just adrenaline, she'd told herself even in the moment not that she even cared. Logic was replaced with need and relief. As if kissing Steve was something she'd wanted the whole time and just been afraid or too oblivious to see._

And then he'd crashed into the Potomac and they didn’t talk about it.

When she heard the knocking on her front door, Natasha jumped. After midnight on Christmas and most would be hard pressed to give even a rough idea of where she lived. She reviewed the different people that could possibly be knocking, (Clint? The lady down the hall? ), and tightened the belt on her robe.

She did not expect Steve, wet hair as if he’d forgotten, ( _more likely ignored_ ), the storm outside.

"It's Christmas," he panted, eyes wide and ruddy cheeks. He'd been running. "And I...here."

Steve pulled a green hardback from underneath his coat, a red bow taped to the jacket.

Natasha looked at the book, turning it over so she could read the title on the spine, not that she was actually reading at all. There he was, on her doorstep, like a mirage. Someone she'd wished into being and she was looking at the book all the while just trying to catch her breath.

He took her breath away.

It made about as much sense as her celebrating Christmas.

"it's...strange. It wouldn't feel right not spending Christmas with you," Steve said quickly, as if apologizing. "I didn't mean to bother you."

Natasha answered by grabbing his collar and tiptoeing up to lace her arms around his neck. She hated Christmas but she loved Steve Rogers, though she wasn't yet ready to explain in what capacity. He felt so good, holding her tight and looking into her eyes like he had just won the lottery and still wasn't sure it was real. Irony, she thought and laughed into his mouth.

"Merry Christmas," she sighed, almost content.

When he said it back, he smiled in a way she hadn't seen from him. Boyish and charming and it made her believe, just a little.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Good Chilean Wine](http://www.casillerodeldiablo.com/en) that I have bought at the market often
> 
> I thought, given her addiction to the best-seller's list, that it was appropriate for Steve to give her a copy of ["Forever Amber"](http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Rediscovered-Classics-Kathleen-Winsor-ebook/dp/B0087GZ8EW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451169418&sr=1-1&keywords=forever+amber) about a woman "who makes her way up through the ranks of 17th century English society by sleeping with and/or marrying successively richer and more important men, while keeping her love for the one man she could never have. "
> 
> The headcanon that Natasha's first Christmas was a mission comes from a discussion with [Pure-Vibranium-Heart](http://pure-vibranium-heart.tumblr.com/) and I am grateful she shared it with me :)
> 
> Takkatan Todd= fried insects in Thailand; based on conversation with [ElCapitan_Rogers](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elcapitan_rogers/pseuds/elcapitan_rogers) about how Natasha _would_.


End file.
